Correspondence Management—A Classic CCM Use Case

Acronyms like CCM sound as alien to many businesspeople as they do to consumers. CCM is short for customer communication management and is actually one of the most essential bridges between you and your customers. That’s especially true for subscription- or relationship-based businesses that depend on repeat customers.

Oftentimes, the best way to explain something is by using a story to illustrate the finer points of how it operates. Here’s some background info on what CCM is and a scenario outlining how correspondence management benefits both you and your customers.

Managing customer correspondence with a CCM platform helps company and customer.

Introduction to CCM

A CCM platform helps manage essential customer communication use cases such as just about any type correspondence. It accomplishes this by centralizing all templates and content into a singular interface, by connecting to often time disparate data sources for personalization, and by incorporating business logic and line-of-business application (e.g., CRM, contract/policy admin., etc.) integrations to automate countless time-consuming tasks. The time you save by streamlining and automating these operations delivers significant and tangible benefits to the company.

Classic Use Case: Correspondence Management

One of the most relatable customer journeys is that of the auto claim. Customers making contact to file an insurance claim represent a perfect example of how using CCM properly can make a difference.

Picture this: a middle-aged man working two jobs with a family, who has never been late on a car insurance payment, gets into an accident.

After dealing with the other driver and going through the process of making a report with the police, he’s left late for work and mildly injured. After contacting his family to tell them what happened and that he’s not seriously hurt, the next thing on his mind will be contacting his insurance company.

As it turns out, however, it can be much more difficult to find an insurance company’s services online as an existing customer. Unfortunately, many insurance companies design their websites to attract new customers rather than helping the ones they already have.

As an insurance company (or any other service provider), you need to take into consideration your customers will find and interact with your organization over any given touchpoint. Making it as convenient and accessible as possible should be the primary focus.

Once the customer has initiated the claim, he will need to provide information to the insurance company so they can review it, and then, decide whether to deny it or approve the claim and process the payment. This usually means the customer has to fill out a bunch of forms. What if the forms never reach the customer? The process stalls, and with each passing day, the customer grows increasingly frustrated.

Without a CCM platform, the customer could be missing the forms until he calls, most likely in a very agitated mood, to ask for them, once again. If the insurance company in our scenario had a CCM platform, it would have reached out to the customer automatically to remind them of all of the required forms, ensuring that the customer had successfully received them. Then this story would have a happy ending, there would be no angry calls from the customer, and all would be well for all parties involved.

Key Advantages of CCM

According to Forbes, engaging and delighting customers are the two primary drivers of purchases. Businesses who utilize CCM platforms find it easier to keep customers both delighted and engaged through timely, personalized, and relevant correspondence.

CCM platforms help companies streamline the creation and delivery of customer communications, reducing the time it takes for a customer to receive each communication regardless of channel used (e.g., SMS, web, or print).

Because they integrate with systems of record like policy and claims administration systems, CCM platforms can pull data specific to an individual policyholder into the correspondence, and can even partially complete attached forms with the data on hand. This saves the policyholder time and makes them feel more like a person and less like an account number. Plus, by automatically including enclosures like a postage-paid pre-addressed envelope, CCM platforms help cut down processing time.

Enthuse Your Customers

The biggest value of CCM is the satisfaction that it brings to company and customer. Acquiring, satisfying, and managing customers becomes significantly easier when using a CCM platform. Whether you use Topdown’s cloud-based or on-premise CCM platform, you will increase customer satisfaction and improve operational efficiency.

About John Zimmerer

John Zimmerer is the senior director of marketing at Topdown, where he leads market research and outreach efforts for the company's customer communications and customer experience products. Most recently, John has been researching and writing about the future direction of the technologies that power customer experience, and is regarded as a thought leader in this area.
John has nearly 20 years of software product marketing experience. His areas of expertise include market research, analyst relations, public relations and digital marketing.